What really does not work will eventually need to change. Sooner rather than later, Europe’s green movement will need to accept this most inconvenient of truths.
Or at least they should.
E urope’s inflation crisis has only become worse since Putin started his war in Ukraine. Apart from the war, the reasons for soaring prices include money-printing central banks and supply chains that still are strained as a result of the pandemic. Another key factor should not be overlooked: Europe’s energy-transition policies, which have led to massive investment — with subsidies to match — in renewable energy, specifically wind and solar power. But all those millions have not changed the fact that renewable energy is not yet reliable enough to bear the load that politicians would put on it.
Regardless, the EU has also imposed binding renewable-energy targets of at least 32 percent by 2030. It is one thing to want to reduce CO2 emissions. It is quite another to try to micromanage how.
The most obvious method to cut CO2 emissions is relying on nuclear energy. For a long time, this was not the preference of the EU or its member states, mostly due to lobbying by green groups that often have their roots in anti-nuclear activism. This changed in 2021, when, as a result of sharply increased energy prices, the Netherlands adopted a more positive attitude toward nuclear, as did France. Several European countries, including the U.K., have followed suit since. At the EU level, France and central and eastern European countries managed to convince the European Commission to recognize that nuclear energy can contribute to the decarbonization of the EU economy in the context of the EU’s so-called “taxonomy” regulations that classify investments according to how environmentally friendly they are.
What the EU’s energy planners have not liked to mention (at least until recently) is that greater dependence on unreliable wind and solar energy has really meant greater reliance on natural gas, often from Russia, even more so when this has coincided with policies of switching off nuclear-power plants.
European policy-makers are now putting a lot of emphasis on the claim that investing even more into wind and solar energy will help the EU become more independent from Russian gas. The reality is that despite years of subsidies to wind and solar energy, these energy sources account for only about 10 percent of global energy production — which is only slightly higher in Europe.
Pick Your Poison
The reality is that in order for either wind or solar power to be a key source of the EU’s power supplies, a reliable backup energy source is needed, until far better storage technology is developed. Until then, both solar and wind are going to be hobbled by the immutable facts that the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine.
The options to provide that backup essentially boil down to either nuclear, gas, or coal. Germany and the EU have been conducting hostile policies toward nuclear and coal, meaning that they thereby have been indirectly favoring gas — Russian gas. It should be noted that the EU is actually tasked to promote nuclear, as a result of the Euratom Treaty, but it has declined to do so with enthusiasm and is even discriminating against nuclear power when it comes to state aid. In practice, Germany has simply continued with burning coal.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with investing more into wind and solar energy (assuming that the backup problem is properly addressed) — even despite their significant environmental downsides — as long as this happens without government subsidies, and that is hardly the case at the moment. Energy markets everywhere have been heavily distorted by government interference, subsidies, and political uncertainty, but the continued importance of nuclear power for the energy mix of various European countries, despite it being the least subsidized energy source, suggests that if there were a truly free energy market, nuclear energy would probably be very successful. It could again be the fuel of the future.
The fact that Germany has become so dependent on Russian energy imports is owed a great deal to Angela Merkel’s irresponsible decision to resume and even accelerate the shutdown of German nuclear-power stations, along with a rush into renewables that was not properly thought through. More evidence of the nuclear taboo comes from the Netherlands, where the government in 2018 decided to end exploitation of the country’s natural-gas reserve in Groningen — the largest gas field in Europe — while only making the decision to build new nuclear-power stations at the end of 2021.
Similarly, in Poland — which has been taking a hard line against Russia for so long, and which was an opponent of the Nord Stream 2 project — the decision to build two nuclear-power plants and become less energy-dependent on Russia only came in 2021. The reality is what it is. In the case of many European countries, if they wish to win back energy independence from Russia and move forward to net-zero GHG emissions, then nuclear energy, given the state of current energy technology, is the only practical way to go.
European countries should also seriously investigate whether shale gas is really so bad for the environment as is so often currently claimed. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they will be importing a great deal of American shale gas — “freedom gas,” as the Trump administration dubbed it — to become less dependent on Putin. Under the circumstances, the fact that shale or fracking remains banned in Europe seems senseless, hypocritical, or both. The prime minister of Bavaria, Markus Söder, has already called for a reconsideration of this ban.
The latest proposed European sanctions package would, following America’s lead, include a ban on the import of Russian oil. This may well mean that more taboos will have to be given up soon. Take biofuels, for example. As things stand, the EU is planning to phase them out. The reasoning behind this is that they are often derived from palm oil, something that supposedly contributes to deforestation.
Supposedly.
In reality, this depends greatly on where the palm oil in question comes from. Eighty-four percent of the palm oil used in biofuels originates from Malaysia and Indonesia. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, deforestation is not so problematic in Asia as it is in Africa and South America, as it notes that “Asia had the highest net gain of forest area in 2010–2020.” According to the World Resources Institute, an independent think tank, Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru “see high levels of forest loss,” specifically singling out Malaysia and Indonesia as “bright spots of hope for forests” as “primary forest loss . . . fell in Malaysia for the fourth year in a row.”
Recently, Indonesia decided to restrict palm-oil exports, although Malaysia continues with its exports. Behind this is growing concern for food shortages, as palm oil is used for food (cooking oil, but much more besides), which is also something green NGOs have been campaigning against for years. Reality has now intervened. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the prices of sunflower oil, an important alternative to palm oil, have skyrocketed, as Russia and Ukraine are the major producers of this oil.
This has caused producers to replace products with sunflower oil with palm oil. It notably also forced the British supermarket chain Iceland to decide to lift its ban on palm oil as an ingredient for things like frozen French fries or breaded fish. The chain will only use certified sustainable palm oil, which will not be difficult as the certification system is already well established in this sector and is also supported by organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which has stated: “The best thing we can do is support sustainable palm oil and avoid boycotts, since we know substitutions with other vegetable oils can lead to even further environmental and social harm.”
Playtime Is Over
As a result of the war in Ukraine, amid potential diesel shortages, it is “game over” for all sorts of ill-founded and often protectionist-inspired restrictions that take little account of real environmental damage. Questionable and experimental policies therefore face a “reality check” because of the war.
This is certainly also true for European energy policy, although, sorting out the mess in which the Europeans find themselves is going to take time. Changing energy policies simply cannot be done overnight, but may take up to a decade. Following France’s lead, the U.K., the Netherlands, and Belgium adjusted their views on nuclear energy. All eyes are now on what Germany will do. Three German nuclear-power plants are still in operation. They are scheduled to be shut down by the end of the year, and in the unlikely event that the decision is made to extend their life, they will need to close for a while for technical reasons.
For now, Germany’s Greens, an important element in the country’s governing coalition, are strongly resisting any extension of these power stations’ operational lives, while desperately pushing alternatives, such as hydrogen imports or even the reopening of coal-fired power stations. Meanwhile, at the EU level, the European Commissioner Frans Timmermans — responsible for extremely expensive isolation requirements for construction and increasingly unworkable climate objectives, such as sourcing an unrealistically high percentage of energy from unreliable renewables — wants to go further and further with the extension of Europe’s cap and trade system (in effect an EU climate tax on energy) to all kinds of new sectors, not something that consumers hard-pressed by inflation are likely to appreciate.
However, there is such a thing as political gravity: What really does not work and is totally out of touch with reality, will eventually need to change. Sooner rather than later, Europe’s green movement will need to accept this most inconvenient of truths.